A.—2a.

4

In the case of Forester and others v. the Secretai'y of State for India, in which the judgment of this Committee was delivered on the 11th May, 1872, a defence of the same nature as that in the lastmentioned case was set up ; but the decision there was on this point against the Secretary of State. In this suit also the answer set out the facts which were relied on to show that the action of the Government complained of was a political act of State. As far as their Lordships are aware, it will be found that in all the suits brought against the Government of India, whether in this country or in India, the pleas and answers of the Government have shown, with more or less particularity, the nature and character of the acts complained of, and the grounds on which, as being political acts of the sovereign power, they were not cognizable by the Courts. (See the Nabob of the Carnatic v. tiie East India Company, 2 Ves. Jr., 388; ex-Rajah of Coorg v. the East India Company, 27 Beavan, 300; Rajah Salig Ram v. the Secretary of State for India, in which judgment was given by this Committee on 22nd August, 1872.) None of these cases help the present plea. On the contrary, it appears from them not only that the facts were laid before the Courts, but that the Courts eutertained jurisdiction to inquire into the nature of the acts complained of, and it was only when it was established that they bore the character of political acts of State that it was decided they could not take further cognizance of them. It is to be observed that the sovereign authority conferred upon the East India Company appears in Acts of Parliament, and, therefore, without being pleaded, the Courts would have judicial notice of it. Coming to the present plea, we find that, after stating that the defendant was Captain General and Governor-in-Chief of the Island of Jamaica, the only averments in it are that the acts complained of were done by him as Governor of the island, and in the exercise of his reasonable discretion as such, and as acts of State. There is no attempt to show the occasion on which the seizure of the plaintiff's ship was made, nor the grounds on which that seizure, which is not in itself of tho nature of an act of State, became and was such an act. The plea does not aver, even generally, that the seizure was an act which the defendant was empowered to do as Governor, nor even that it was an act of State. It would have been contended at the trial if issue had been taken that it would satisfy the averments of this plea to prove that the defendant assumed to make the seizure as Governor, and assumed to do it as an act of State, without showing that the act itself was an act of State properly so called, and was within the limits of his authority. It was said that the plea should be construed as requiring, by implication, proof of these matters; but, having regard to its nature and form as a plea of privilege, this cannot properly be held to be its meaning. Their Lordships cannot but think it was designedly pleaded in its present shape. It was a preliminary plea intended to raise the question whether the Governor, if acting de facto as such, and doing an act that he assumed and deemed to be an act of State, could be called on to show in the Courts of the colony that the seizure complained of was really an act of State, of the nature and class of those which, as Governor acting on behalf of the Crown, he had authority to do. The object of the plea plainly was to stop the Court from entering upon such an inquiry ; but, upon ihe construction now sought to be given to it, this object would, from the first, have been frustrated, if issue had been taken, for the Court must then have gone into the very inquiry which it was the manifest purpose of the plea to avert. It appears to their Lordships that the plaintiff could not have safely taken issue on it. He would have been met at the trial by the objection that it was a plea of privilege, pleaded as a preliminary plea to the jurisdiction, and neither was, nor was intended to be, an answer to the action. It was contended that, under "The Supreme Court Procedure Law, 1872," of the colony, which provides that defects in form shall be disregarded, and that, on demurrer, the Court shall give judgment according to the very right of the cause, the judgment should now be given for the defendant; but their Lordships think, for the reasons above given, that upon this ambiguous and defective plea, a proper and final judgment on the right of the cause cannot be pronounced. In the result, their Lordships must humbly advise Her Majesty to affirm the judgment of the Court below, and with costs.

No. 2. Copy of a DESPATCH from the Eight Hon. Sir M. E. Hicks Beach to the Officer Administering the Government of New Zealand. (Circular.) Sir, — Downing Street, 24th Eebruary, 1880. In my circular despatch of the 28th of March of last year I called attention to a paper which had been recently presented to Parliament containing a digest of the information which my predecessor had obtained as to the timber resources of the colonies. 2. In answer to that circular I have received several applications for information as to the laws and regulations existing in those colonies in which measures have been taken for the conservation of their forests; and, with the view of supplying such information in a clear and compendious form, I have been in communication with Mr. Julian Rogers, the Secretary of the Institution of Surveyors, by whom the digest of information respecting colonial timber was prepared. 3. I have now the honor to transmit, for the information of your Government, a copy of a letter in which Mr. Rogers has stated the principles which, in his opinion, should govern legislation in reference to the preservation and re-establish-ment of forests, together with a copy of a paper which he has been good enough to